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RECORDING IN THE SOUTH

Early Recorded Rural & Country Music

In the American South (Paperback - 28 Mar 2011)

 

Robert D. Morritt

 

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          This book describes the history of country music in rural America, by tracing recording sessions from the earliest fiddle recording made by a North Carolinian in New York City in 1916 over six years before the stated ‘first country recording by Gilliland and Robertson in 1922 as reported by most earlier sources.

 

          There were no recording studios in the south in the days before highways were built. The few that made the effort to record rural music had to make their way from the hills to New York City. This book describes the advent of this form of music and of these and later sessions that produced records, which attracted a wider audience for this type of music.

 

          Eventually the industry realized the need to be closer to the source and to attract local musicians and opened recording studios in the South, namely Bristol, TN, Ashland, KY, Ashville, NC, later in Louisville, KY, Atlanta, GA, Memphis, TN, Charlotte, NC and other studios created further West (San Antonio, TX, etc) to attract the new ‘Western’ or ‘Cowboy’ music and later in Appalachia a newer style of rural music, late known as Bluegrass music.

 

          The book affords the reader a convenient time-line as one can follow each session. In many cases where known, musicians are identified as well as vocalists together with matrix and catalogue numbers. Also Included are the earliest Country Gospel recording sessions. With this time-guide, the reader can trace the transition of rural music, from its (at first archaic ‘hill’ styles to its more flexible and popular form prior to WWII

 

          With the advent of radio, ‘country’ music adapted other styles influenced by popular music, and fusion of other styles (urban, jazz and blues) that later metamorphosized into modern country music after WWII and is outside the scope of this book.

 

          The book is unique, because it not only identifies this era and recorded history in-depth by containing an extensive discography from the earliest period onwards. It also identifies sessions, artists, and cases where a matrice would be used to press records that were subsequently sold in retail stores bearing not only different pseudonyms for the same recording artist. but issued on different  labels depending on which dime-store one purchased the same recording at.